Justina Schlund

Growing up in Texas as the daughter of immigrants, Justina learned early that schools could open doors but weren’t always places where young people felt valued and heard. That experience fueled her commitment to building school communities where every student experiences joy, belonging, and thriving. 

After starting her career as an education reporter, Justina began teaching Head Start on Chicago’s Southwest side. She later served as a school administrator and executive director of Chicago Public School’s Office of Social and Emotional Learning, where she scaled evidence-based strategies across more than 430 schools and overhauled the districts’ discipline policies, resulting in a 76 percent reduction in suspensions. She also launched a districtwide initiative to build organizational commitment to racial equity. More recently, Justina was Vice President of Communications and Senior Director of Field Learning at the nonprofit Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. There, she built a national coalition of 70+ major organizations to combat political attacks on social and emotional learning, led the organization’s thought leadership strategy, and authored key field-building publications.

Justina joined E4E because she believes in the power of collective voice to shape schools and policies that deliver on the promise of opportunity for all students. She holds a Bachelors in journalism from Northwestern University and Masters in education from Harvard.